your starter for ten
One of my guilty pleasures during the current lockdown was tuning in to the nightly broadcasting of the marginally less difficult, Christmas University Challenge, where alumni of their august institutions pitched-up to show us exactly how much they had forgotten from the halcyon days of their further education. Contestants I recognised included the BBC’s News Business Editor, Simon Jack, comedian and perpetual Young One, Ade Edmondson, Hairy Biker, Dave Myers, former England cricketer, Monty Panesar (who hit his buzzer only once, interrupting Jeremy Paxman, getting it wrong and awarding his team, Loughborough, a five point penalty) and weather presenter, Sarah Keith-Lucas, who very clearly demonstrated the true worth of a Geography degree!
With the ever-sarcastic, dismissive and increasingly curmudgeonly Jezza at the helm, the show highlighted the ability of those taking part to not take themselves too seriously, even when the entirely predictable teenage photos filled our small-screen. Sadly, it also clearly displayed the over-dominance of our society by highly educated individuals from the dreaming spires of our redbrick institutions. To a man, and woman, all participants had obviously used their university days to great effect and now held high-flying, senior, industry-leading positions within their chosen fields of, largely, media, culture, arts, academia and finance. The question it prompted is whether the current crop of distanced-learning zoom-taught students will be as fortunate and, extrapolating further, which jobs should be valued?
In his investigative ‘Head Hand Heart’ author David Goodhart asks the same and backs-up his findings with exhaustive analysis. The hourly wage of bus drivers has risen by just 22% since 1975, while PR managers have seen theirs increase by 111%. Can we really say that we value the latter’s almost six times more than the former? Compare the junior account manager in the city with a care worker in the suburbs, or a school dinner lady with a hands-on tech administrator and the pronounced trend will be exactly the same. Goodhart argues that intellectual people (heads) have been ever more rewarded, whilst largely unskilled manual workers (hands) and those in caring roles (hearts) have been stripped of status, respect and dignity, all clearly represented in their flagging wages.
Perhaps the upside to our current Covid-19 condition is the importance we now place upon the ‘hands’ of our society, the truly key-workers who didn’t go to college such as our delivery drivers, shop-workers, carers, nurses, baristas and let’s hope our new-found respect outlasts the pandemic. Why, we may even reflect it in their pay-packet sometime, though I’m not holding my breath.
NB. In the process of researching this post (you researched it? – ed) I was surprised and shocked in equal measure to come across many of our mockney media luvvies who, on the face of it, are delighted to play down their private schooling past whilst enjoying the privilege it obviously confers: Royally-related (Edward III, Henry III and all the way back to William the Conqueror) Danny Dyer attended Dragon’s and then Eton dontchaknow; Foot-in-the-mouth and decidedly unroyally-connected any longer, Danny Baker, went to Ludgrove and Haberdasher’s Aske’s; Betting-industry go-to hard-man, Ray Winstone was a Collet Court and St Paul’s pupil; I’ll bet Kathy Burke was not so slovenly when she attended Sarum Hall and Roedean; Septum-missing Daniella Westbrook’s nose was never out of joint at Wellesley House and Marlborough and infamous lock, stock & two ball-grabbing Vinnie Jones undoubtedly ran rings around everyone at Ardingly College and Lancing!
